Posts tagged with "HNTB":

Celebrating a peculiar form preservation, Los Angeles City Councilmember José Huizar and the Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering will be teaming up on August 13th to host “Rock Day L.A.,” an event focused around handing out roughly 1,000 pieces of the iconic Sixth Street Bridge, currently under demolition. The event, held as part of the City's effort to keep the public engaged with the $449 million project, will feature live music and food as officials hand out free chunks of the structure on a first-come, first-served basis. Each piece will be accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.
The event, hosted on a Saturday morning to ensure public access, will mark another milestone in the Sixth Street Bridge’s replacement, as crews have spent the last six months methodically deconstructing one of L.A.’s most iconic structures.
Built in 1932 using an innovative-for-the-time, on-site concrete manufacturing plant, the Sixth Street Bridge was eventually found to be suffering from Alkali-Silica Reaction (ASR), commonly referred to as "concrete cancer." ASR is a malady that occurs when concrete is made with too much alkali content, setting off a chemical reaction between that alkali content and the concrete’s aggregate, resulting in a gel-like substance that weakens the structure. This chemical byproduct creates stress within the concrete itself, resulting in a brittle material that, given L.A.’s seismically active history, has the potential to cause catastrophic failure. The bridge was designated as a public safety hazard in 2011 when the Bureau of Engineering estimated that there was a 70% chance the bridge could collapse in a major earthquake over the next 50 years. The following year, an international design competition was held afterward to design a replacement.
The Sixth Street Bridge will be replaced by a HNTB and Michael Maltzan Architecture-designed structure that evokes the Art Deco original with its cascade of swoopy, cable-stayed supports. The new structure, due to be finished in 2019, will feature an array of public parks, plazas, and connections to the city’s Los Angeles River, which is also currently undergoing radical change and restoration.

The City of Sacramento is moving along with the redevelopment of the Sacramento Railyards, what was once the largest rail yard west of the Mississippi River. At 244-acres, the proposed mixed-used, adaptive-reuse project is just north of the city’s downtown.
The original scope of the project was approved by the Sacramento City Council in 2007 and included the development of a maximum of 12,100 dwelling units, 1.4 million square feet of retail, 1,100 hotel rooms, 2.4 million square feet of office, 485,390 square feet of historic/cultural space, and 491,000 square feet of mixed use. In June 2015, the master plan for the site was altered to include a new, HNTB Corporation-designed Major League Soccer team stadium as well as a hospital complex in exchange for fewer residential units. New guidelines for the redevelopment also include up to 10,000 dwelling units, 405,741 square feet of retail, up to 3.8 million square feet of offices, 771,405 square feet of flexible mixed use, a 1,100 room hotel, and 33 acres of open space.At the heart of the project lies the San Francisco-based BCV Architects’ proposal for the redevelopment and adaptive reuse of the site’s landmarked depot structures, known as the “central shops historic district.” BCV’s 500,000 square foot retail district is to include restaurants, entertainment venues, public art, and commercial space surrounded by open space. The firm’s proposal takes the existing red brick depot structures and surrounds them with tree-lined, hardscaped pedestrian zones and a mix of simply-articulated new construction.
Kansas City-based HNTB Corporation will design the 25,000 seat soccer stadium will be built in the hopes of converting Sacramento’s minor league FC Republic team into a professional one. The stadium’s design is to include a steeply-pitched rake to amplify the crowd’s cheers.
Work on the soccer stadium is expected to be completed as soon as 2018, while the long term redevelopment schedule for the remainder of the site is still in the works.
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So long, Sixth Street Bridge. We knew it was coming, but Wednesday marked the last day the iconic Art Deco span would be open to the public. Built in 1932, the iconic double-loop overpass over the L.A. River will live on in movies, videos, and photos.
A victim of age, the bridge was declared unsalvageable due to irreversible decay in 2012 and the Bureau of Engineering launched a competition to design a new, $400 million, cable stayed structure. HNTB with Michael Maltzan Architecture came out the winners in that infrastructural bout and with the demise of the old bridge their loop-de-loop ten-arch span is one step closer to realization.
The mayor’s office released new renderings of the bridge that look decidedly toned down from the 2012 winning boards. While older images depicted stairways built into the arches so that pedestrians could get an elevated view and the concrete embankments planted with wildflowers, updated renderings depict a staid park in the shade of the roadbed.
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Developer Leonard Hill (a founding partner of Linear City Development) recently gave a $1.9 million gift to the Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles. Those moneys were earmarked to fund the design, construction, and programming of an arts plaza beneath the new Sixth Street Bridge. With such a contribution, one might hope that the park space slated to open in 2019 will be more fully realized than the uninspired placeholder suggested in the renderings.

When it opened in 2013, the Squibb Park Bridge that zigzagged between Brooklyn Heights and Brooklyn Bridge Park instantly became one of the most thrilling pieces of the waterfront retreat. The HNTB-designed pedestrian bridge was designed to have some bounce in it, so getting to the park was more than a typical pedestrian experience, it was a fun little adventure. At least for the humans voyaging across it—dogs hated it. The petrified, why-are-you-doing-this-to-me looks on their faces as the wood structure ebbed and flowed were haunting.
But while the Squibb Park bridge may have seemed a little precarious, everything was surely fine. The movement was just part of the fun. The Brooklyn Bridge Park said so right on its website: "Walk across the award-winning Squibb Park Bridge and you may notice a little spring in your step. That’s because it was designed to be lightweight and flexible like the trail bridges in our state and national parks." See, totally stable. Well, maybe not.
By last summer, the bridge wasn't just springing, it was swaying. So in August, the bridge was closed. That was supposed to be temporary, but the bridge is still off limits today. Back in February, the Brooklyn Paper reported that the structure needed $700,000 in repairs—nearly a quarter of the bridge's initial cost. Those repairs were supposed to wrap up in the Spring.
So now Spring has arrived—almost peak Brooklyn Bridge Park season—and the bouncy bridge is still inaccessible. “At this point, because of the movement we notice, it would be overly optimistic to say we could solve this in two to three weeks," Regina Myer, president of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation told the New York Times.
Engineers are apparently studying the structure's movements. The bridge is still expected to open later this spring, but no exact date has been given. And there has not been a full accounting of exactly what caused the problems. A spokesperson has said the issue could come down to a "misalignment."
Park officials told the Times that the solution will include installing cross braces, which a park spokesperson said would make the bridge "a little less bouncy than it was before." One would hope.

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has announced the 2015 recipients of its Institute Honor Awards, which it describes as “the profession’s highest recognition of works that exemplify excellence in architecture, interior architecture and urban design.” This year’s 23 recipients were selected from out of about 500 submissions and will be honored at the AIA’s upcoming National Convention and Design Exposition in Atlanta. That event will be keynoted by former President Bill Clinton. Now onto the winners in the architecture category.
28th Street Apartments; Los AngelesKoning Eizenberg Architecture

From the AIA: The historic YMCA (1926) had been a focus of African-American life in the era of segregation but had fallen into severe disrepair. The design re-establishes the building’s role as a community focus, restores principal spaces for youth training programs, brings existing living quarters in compliance with contemporary standards and adds new housing units. Inventive integration of new building systems released the existing rooftop for outdoor social space that connects and anchors old and new. The new addition is thin and cross-ventilated. It is shaded to the south by a vertical photovoltaic panel array and wrapped to the north with lightweight perforated metal screens that contrast with the heft of the original masonry building.

From the AIA:The campus of Rice University is a continuously studied and managed “canvas” that represents an intensive ongoing collaboration between architects, planners, and administrators. Its park-like environment—with live oaks, lawns, walkways, arcades, courtyards, and buildings—comprises a clear and timeless vision. The Brockman Hall for Physics needed to fit within this distinctive setting, to gather together a faculty of physicists and engineers working in as many as five separate buildings, and to house highly sophisticated research facilities carefully isolated from the noise, vibrations, and temperature fluctuations that could destroy experiments.

From the AIA: The historic stadium is one of the most beloved and iconic structures on the UC Berkeley campus. The key goals for this project were to restore the stadium’s historic and civic prominence, integrate modern training and amenity spaces, and address severe seismic concerns. By setting the new athlete training facility into the landscape, a new grand 2-acre public plaza for the stadium was created on the roof. A new press box/club crowns the historic wall; its truss-like design acts as a counterpoint to the historic facade.

From the AIA: The Cambridge Public Library has become the civic “Town Common” for a city that celebrates and welcomes its highly diverse community (with over 50 languages spoken in its schools). With its all-glass double-skin curtain wall front facade, the library opens seamlessly out to a major public park. This double-skin curtain wall uses fixed and adjustable technologies to ensure that daylight is infused throughout the interiors and to maximize thermal comfort for the most active patron spaces looking out to the park.

From the AIA: The design solution to the site’s inherent dilemmas was to wrap a subterranean museum around a dry dock like a doughnut, where the hole was the dry dock itself and the centerpiece of the museum’s collection. Three two-level bridges span the dry dock, serving as shortcuts to various sections of the museum. All floors slope gently, so that a visitor continually descends further below the water’s edge to learn about Danish maritime lore. The civil engineering and construction work for the museum were among the most complicated ever undertaken in Denmark.

From the AIA: Located in Manhattan, John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s new building provides all the functions of a traditional college campus within the confines of a single city block. SOM’s 625,000-square-foot addition doubles the size of the college’s existing facilities by adding classrooms, laboratories, auditoriums, faculty offices, and social spaces. These functions are arranged within a new 14-story tower and four-story podium topped with an expansive landscaped terrace that serves as an elevated campus commons. A 500-foot-long cascade runs the length of the podium and functions as the social spine of the campus. SOM’s design places a premium on communal and interactive space so that students may enjoy the experiences of a traditional college setting.

Krishna P. Singh Center for Nanotechnology at the University of Pennsylvania; PhiladelphiaWEISS/MANFREDI

From the AIA: Challenging the established model of laboratory buildings, the Krishna P. Singh Center for Nanotechnology is organized around an ascending spiral that hybridizes the tradition of the campus quadrangle with the public promenade. The Center for Nanotechnology twists its laboratories around a central campus green, opening the sciences to the University of Pennsylvania’s landscape while providing a suite of public spaces within the building for cross-disciplinary collaboration amongst scientists. Here, multiple types—courtyard, laboratory loft, ascending gallery—each with their own distinct histories, are grafted together to create a new, but recognizable hybrid.

From the AIA: This project restored 26 acres of Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in the 19th century and added a new 75,000-square-foot, year-round skating and recreational facility. In the winter, the facility’s two rinks are open for ice skating, and in the summer one rink converts to roller skating and the other to a large water-play fountain. Clad in rough-hewn gray granite, the new LeFrak Center appears to be large stone retaining walls set in the landscape. Much of the structure is tucked into the land. The L-shaped plan consists of the east and north block, both one-story structures with roof terraces connected by a bridge.

From the AIA: The Center of Hope, commissioned by World Vision, is located in a rural region in Haiti and provides support, education, and skill building opportunities. The design process involved the entire community from children to elders. Construction included on-the-job skills training for over 100 residents. The courtyard scheme and breezeway capture prevailing winds while opening expansive views to the mountains beyond. Careful planning for natural ventilation, daylighting, water collection, sewage treatment, and electricity generation resulted in a completely self-sufficient building. The participatory and empathetic process created an uplifting environment that inspires hope.

From the AIA: The design of the new United States Courthouse in Salt Lake City emanates from a search for a strong, iconic, transparent, and metaphorically egalitarian form to symbolize the American judiciary system. The primary nature of the courthouse’s cubic mass projects grounded dignity, immovable order, and an equal face to all sides. The 400,000-square-foot, 10-story courthouse resides on a landscaped terrace that spans an entire city block, uniting the new and existing federal courthouses as a public-access amenity while fulfilling a required federal security setback from the street.

From the AIA: Located on a bluff overlooking the Kentucky River, the visitor center is the newest component of recent additions and expansions to the Wild Turkey Distillery Complex, one of seven original member distilleries of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail. The 9,140-square-foot facility houses interactive exhibits, a gift shop, event venues, a tasting room, and ancillary support spaces. Utilizing a simple barn silhouette (an interpretation of Kentucky tobacco barns common to the area), the building, clad in a custom chevron pattern of stained wood siding, presents a clear and recognizable marker in the landscape.

A team made up of HNTB (which is also leading the 6th Street Viaduct in Los Angeles), 64North, Bionic Landscape Architecture, and Ned Kahn have won a competition to design a new pedestrian and bicycle bridge spanning the 101 Freeway in Palo Alto at Adobe Creek. The winning proposal for the Adobe Creek Overcrossing, called Confluence, is highlighted by a multi-story, leaning steel arch integrated with an intricate web of cables and floating steel disks.
The bridge's sinuous form was "drawn from the trajectories of the cyclists moving along it and the sinuous waterways of the Bay," according to the team's proposal. Storm water will be captured from the crossing and re-routed to a new basin, designed to adapt to changing seawater rise. The team beat out shortlisted teams led by Moffatt and Nichol and Endrestudio in a competition that elicited 20 responses. The plan will go before City Council in February for review and possible approval.

San Jose Mercury News columnist (and frequent ANcontributor) Alan Hess took on HNTB's Levi's Stadium, the new $1.3 billion home of the San Francisco 49ers. Hess compares the "starkly utilitarian," 68,500 seat stadium to Silicon Valley's high tech environments, and even to its high-end gadgets. The building "translates the high-def experience of a game we see on TV—the roaring crowd, the superhuman action of the players, the intense color of the grass under the TV-studio lighting, the camaraderie of loyal 49ers fans celebrating (or commiserating) en masse—into an enormous three-dimensional architectural spectacle," Hess wrote.
Innovations include club seats (including 170 luxury suites) separated from the rest of the stadium bowl (and a lacy steel skeleton) to bring everybody closer to the field; food service via every smartphone; and a variety of viewing environments, including nine clubs. Of course it's all located inside Santa Clara's Great America Parkway, a "multiuse city of workplaces, entertainment, theme parks, convention center, schools and hotels, stitched together with light rail and cars."
Other outlets seem to be equally impressed, at least with the stadium's novelty and gizmos. Time magazine called the stadium the "most high tech sports stadium yet," illustrating partnerships with tech companies like Sony, giant LED displays in both end zones, and wifi and 4G access for all fans. USA Today called it "massive and luxurious," a shiny new antidote to "grungy" Candlestick Park, the Niners' former home, with its "wide concourses and expansive views of the South Bay." And SFist, a little bothered by the lack of shade, liked the solar panels that will power the stadium for all of its home games. But the same reporter, Daisy Barringer, had an interesting comment. Unlike Candlestick Park, which had a decidedly unique mid-century character (and flaws), the new stadium feels a little more, well, normal. "It's just another NFL stadium," said Barringer.
Click here for a live view of the stadium.

Are you afraid of taking Rover with you on your next flight because he might have to go potty in the airport? Well, pet-packing passengers flying through San Diego’s Lindbergh Field can rest easy. The airport’s recent $1 billion “Green Build” Terminal 2 expansion includes the nation’s first and only “pet relief” comfort station. Located between gates 46 and 47, the 75-square-foot rest room is decked out with features to get your four-legged friend in the mood to go, including ersatz grass and a fire hydrant. This may be the first, but it won’t be the last. Tom Rossbach, director of aviation architecture at HNTB, told the San Diego Union-Tribune that the firm is offering the amenity to its other airport clients.

HNTB's Squibb Park Pedestrian Bridge connecting the Brooklyn Heights Promenade with Brooklyn Bridge Park opened to the public last Thursday. The $4.9 million bridge was built using "trail bridge technology" with galvanized steel cables and cylindrical black locust timbers, providing an efficient and lightweight structure that, as a sign at the entrance to the bridge warns, quite literally puts a bounce in visitors' steps. "The bridge is very light weight. You will feel yourself walking across the bridge," HNTB's Chief Engineer Ted Zoli said at a construction tour in December. On AN's visit to the bridge Friday morning, traversing the spans did in fact provide a bouncy effect.
The 400-foot-long Squibb Park Pedestrian Bridge zig-zags through Brooklyn Bridge Park, moving through what will one day be a mixed-use development on the park's edge designed by Rogers Marvel Architects and providing a crucial connection to the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood which sits largely cut off from the waterfront by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
Concrete piers support the main bridge spans across Furman Street and through the park, which gently decline from a height of 50 feet to the waterfront park. LED lights are incorporated into the handrails that will wash the pathway with light in the evening.

Before the end of this year, the Squibb Park Pedestrian Bridge will be completed connecting Brooklyn Heights with the Brooklyn Bridge Park on the waterfront. This windy path over the BQE and through the treetops will quite literally bridge the divide and substantial grade shift between the neighborhood and the park. Construction of this $4.9 million pedestrian bridge, made of black locust timber and galvanized steel, is already underway, and on December 14th and 15th, the spans will be hoisted into place over Furman Street.
HNTB's chief engineer Ted Zoli chose materials that were consistent with the landscape design of Brooklyn Bridge Park designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh. “The bridge is very light weight. You will feel yourself walking across the bridge,” Zoli said at a hard hat tour of Squibb Pedestrian Bridge at Brooklyn Park this afternoon.
While the pedestrian bridge represents a contemporary solution, it is also a throwback to a pre-Robert Moses era when there was direct access to the water before the highway was built. “It is like a gangway,” said Zoli. “It is like how you used to walk to vessels on the water.”

We could't help noticing that LA's new Sixth Street Viaduct, which is being designed by a team led by HNTB, bears a striking resemblance to Dubai's Meydan Bridge, the royal VIP entrance to the Meydan racetrack where the prestigious Dubai World Cup is held annually. The bridge was featured in the recent film, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, but sits empty for most of the year. Of course there are differences between the two: Meydan's arches are made of steel, not concrete, it's not cable-stayed, and its upper arches don't touch the ground, but they're still very close in all their wavy glory.
Judge for yourself below.
HNTB's Sixth Street Viaduct in Los Angeles:
VS
The Meydan Bridge in Dubai.

In September, AN reported on the three proposals to replace Los Angeles' iconic but crumbling Sixth Street Viaduct by HNTB, AECOM, and Parsons Brinckerhoff. The three teams have notably added pedestrian amenities and adjacent lush landscaping to the 3,500-foot-long cable-stayed span. While the renderings were compelling for each design, these video renderings fly the viewer in and around each proposal for a more detail view of what might soon be built in LA. Take a look.
Courtesy AECOM
Courtesy Parsons Brinckerhoff
Courtesy HNTB
[Via Curbed LA.]